You've Got To Sleep Sometime
by Soubrettina
Summary: "Ben, you can't just ask people why they're alive..." The survivors of the Resistance are in hiding, and it seems her short space-immersion is not done with Leia yet. Still, life has not yet run out of surprises. (What has not changed is that... oh, stars, poor Leia)


Chocolate-filled butterpuffs surely hadn't been on any version of the schedules of supplies that Connix had made, and then remade over and over, probably for the sake of something to do. They weren't economical, or infinitely shelf stable, or compact enough to keep in quantity. Leia was surprised that they had been available at all in the out-of-the-way spaceport that the mission had successfully visited.

Only one reason, really- somebody had insisted, just something more interesting than ration packs, textured protein and grains packaged to be rehydrated to mush: just something, something actually appealing to a reluctant appetite. Just to tempt her to eat something. Leia is pretty sure who it would have been, too.

The suspicion was further confirmed seeing Poe Dameron's face when he looked at the pastry left on its plate only two bites smaller.

"That's all you're going to eat?"

"Sorry, Poe."

There's something in his expression that she's never seen before, not even after years of war- she's never seen what Poe looks like as dread sinks down through his inside.

Also, he hesitates- embarrassed to speak what's going through his mind, even with only the two of them there.

"I... I could help you. If you get tired from eating..."

The worst thing is: _he would._ Damn reckless, mad dog flyboy, he would spend whatever time it needed hand-feeding this feeble old woman, she knew it. (It's only because Shara was a bit like you._ He was an impressionable age when Shara died and this is where it comes out. That's all it is._)

"It hasn't come to that." _Yet... And when it does... But we won't think of that._ "I just felt a bit sick, that's all. I'm very sorry. I know they must have come dear."

"What? Not too bad, there was a box of fresh food, bread, cheese- you want bread? And a crate of wine if you want it-"

"Would that have something to do with the singing going on above ground?"

"There might have been something of a party, General."

"Then why aren't you at it?"

Poe gives a spasm of a strange un-smile, and doesn't answer. The trouble is that there's no reassurance she can give him. Not reassurance that she doesn't need his attendance, which is true enough- if he were where he belongs, as the beautiful life and soul of even a desperate celebration- of the few of them still being alive and having a few weeks' worth of food- then Leia would probably have wrapped herself up in her cloak, taken the pillows that had also been sourced for her, and slept until she was otherwise interrupted- she still has enough strength, now and again, that she can get around the dormitory side of the bunker- from her room to the drinking water tap at one end of the passageway, to the 'fresher at the other.

The lie that she can't tell him is that things will improve, that this state of things will pass.

_Well, all things pass. What I mean is, I can't tell him that the next stage will be improvement. Nothing I can tell him will make him able to be himself, when I'm lying here._

But all the same-

"Dameron, I want to sleep now. Go and drink irresponsibly, bend the rules of Resistance discipline to the extreme and challenge Lt Connix on who knows the most verses to 'The Ball of Syrax IV'."

He mock-gasps:

"General, that's a mission impossible!"

"That's a direct order, Commander. By which I mean a direct order and not a-"

A durosteel door slams nearby, followed by muffled swearing, and the scrape of a cot being kicked out of position.

_Rey?_ She's been moved into the space next door- a repurposed cupboard that's entirely filled by a smaller-than-standard cot- less as a mark of status for the resident nearly-Jedi, than because Tico and Connix found her sleep-talking too much. Rey doesn't seem to mind, and Leia personally hasn't been troubled by her- in fact when Leia has been particularly feverish and nauseous, they've woken with a strange synchronicity. Sometimes Leia has been strangely under the impression of being returned to nights when Ben was a baby, when in her dreams she was never quite alone.

Rey stumbles again, and Poe chuckles.

"Sounds like someone's been communing with the Corellian red a bit too much." He calls out: "You okay there, Rey?"

"M'm fine. I don't have to explain myself. I'm better looked after than I've been in my life, actually! Like the First Order is that kriffing safe and nurturing?" The last non-sequitur seems to satisfy her, and the cot creaks as she throws herself down. "Poe? What' you doing down here?"

"I'm with General Organa, Rey. You gonna take a lie down?"

"I don't- stop talking over each other. I don't want you now. I was with my friends. Get out."

The two of them exchange a sidelong look- the grownups together again, looking after the poor lost kid.

"I don't think our Rey is used to alcohol, is she?"

"Do you think she's okay?"

"I'm sure she-"

A sudden lurching feeling, like a ship swerving and the AG taking a second to adjust. Something like a dream that came when exhaustion causes dreams to overtake the onset of sleep- a man's voice, deep enough that it feels almost on the edge of hearing, one that Leia can't put a name to but that she knows is no stranger...

"-not getting embroiled in this kind of foolishness," the unseen man was saying, with which Rey was clearly not impressed.

"You're trying to tell me about foolishness? This is, is just fun, we're just happy for one night-"

"You don't look very happy."

"You got any better ideas, have you? You gonna tell me how to not be scared, and sad and tired? After what you did?"

"We were never meant for an easy life, Rey. You must understand that."

"You want to understand that- you come with me. If you could see Luke, you can see this. Come here." Poe, who has been smirking with a refreshing absence of commanderly responsibility, at least goes to lean out of the bedroom door- and collides with Rey, who mumbles some argument as she struggles to get past him.

"Leave the General alone, Rey. You're drunk."

"Let her in, Poe. I can manage."

Rey isn't at the weaving stage of drunkenness, but her movements are just that bit too determined, as she shoves the door wide open. There are roses in her cheeks that might have otherwise been fetching. She regards Leia- seated on her bed, for Leia is determined not to be in her bed through the nominal day- and, unexpectedly, turns back behind her.

"You see this? You can see this. You see what you've done now."

Poe's understandably bewildered reply is strangely muffled and distant...

And then there he is-as if a pattern of shadows had suddenly made sense. He doesn't appear- suddenly, he steps forward, for he has been there the whole time.

He should have changed more. He shouldn't have been so clearly the boy that she remembers. Full adulthood- rather than its tentative early years- has merely made Ben's looks more definite, a confident statement of what his adolescent face only insinuated; the paring back of what little boyish smoothness he once had has made his immense features look correct, removing at last the look of having borrowed them from someone else.

It can't be. Supreme Leader Kylo Ren has no right to have Ben's mouth and nose and eyebrows, not when they're an only slightly off-kilter copy of Han's. He has no right to Ben's hair, whose gentle curls she once traced around her fingers, wondering in surprise that it had come through almost black, if it would ever lighten. He has no right to Ben's beautiful eyes, with that startling constant look of intensity that he shared with his mother practically from birth.

One eye flickers slightly as a muscle jumps just below- a strange fluttering movement under the skin.

His expression is astonished, and fearful. Rey had told her, of course, and she had felt it, like a faraway whispering- only now did she know it to be true.

"Y-" he starts to say, just as Poe, far away standing behind him, asks what's going on. So he's definitely seeing only Rey making disjointed conversation with the air. That's probably for the best.

"Force stuff, Poe. You'll have to go and have a drink, it's too confusing with you still there. Nothing's going to happen... It can't, can it?"

"Nothing's going to happen. If he tries anything...,"

"You're safe. She shot me the first time this happened." Ben sounds strangely proud of the fact.

Poe glances at Leia for assurance that he- however 'he' is- isn't trying anything, and she makes a gesture to indicate that all is under control and she may be left to deal with it. It's a complicated combination of gesture and expression but she's done it before and a little perceptual distortion need not get in the way.

"I woke up and you were in my hut!" Ben actually recoils from her. The- whatever it was- the amused, detached regard of Rey that was something like admiration- is sucked back to a look that she faintly remembers from Ben's boyhood, the expression of slow, nagging hurt.

Leia looks from one face to another- they seem equally present in the room now.

"Understandable, I think."

_"I think Luke was telling the truth," Rey had said, "or as much truth as there can be. He perceived for a moment only that he was in front of a powerful, evil thing that he didn't recognise- he turned on the sabre in shock, he never meant to harm Ben. But he knew then what Ben saw, and he knew that it was only the confirmation of what Ben already feared to be true."_

_(No such ambiguity about what Ben did to Han, though. Whatever Ben might have misunderstood, Han is still dead.)_

"I don't understand how we're here now. Why are you still alive?"

"_Ben_, you can't just ask someone why they're alive."

"No, but the bridge of the Raddus was completely blown out. I was... there."

"I know." _Could it still have been him? She was so sure that she saw him pass... Does that model have rear guns? She never did work with TIE variations..._"Fancy little ship you had there."

"TIE Silencer. 17.429 meters, hyperdrive equipped, lateral cannons so they're under the-"

"_Indeed_, Ben."

"...and I saw it happen."

"Just saw it."

"Yes."

"Okay. Well I'm not sure. Wasn't a planned manoeuvrer. Honestly, I think I would have thought that I dreamed I got spaced, and I knew I had to go back, so... back I went."

"You... That's the stuff of legends in the Force! Historic masters who nobody quite understands what they did and you just... knew?"

"I suppose. Sorry if I'm out of my lane."

"Luke always said he knew you were powerful!" Leia can't tell if Ben missed the sarcasm or if he's too excited to care if he's just been needled. "He said... He said..." Ben's mouth twitches sideways slightly. "He said you resisted finding out exactly what you could do."

"If I did, there might have been a reason for that. I'm a very different person from Luke."

"Yes… that is true." It did hit home, she's sure of it. It's not as if he covers it very well. "But still… you could have been just like Rey."

"Just like Rey?"

Rey looks up at her name- she's sat down on the durocrete floor, hugging her legs against her chest.

"General Organa's not just like me at all. I can't do that. Not me. I'm nobody. Please don't do this. I'm far too pissed." Rey curls up again, flopping her head down on her knees.

To Leia's definite surprise, Ben huffs with definite disapproval like a frustrated nanny.

"Rey, you get up. That floor must be freezing. If you must get yourself into this state, someone obviously needs to take care of you." He kneels down beside her- to all appearances present in the room, only the fact that the light that touches him is brighter and a bluer color betraying that he is on a star destroyer lightyears away. He takes hold of Rey under her arms and… does he really lift her from where he is? Lifting things without touching them, of course Leia's seen that, but from another region of the galaxy? Or maybe he's not, in fact, taking Rey's weight, but she simply perceives that he's doing so…

Lifting people by placebo. Is Leia particularly lightheaded now? Or is that what Luke had been trying to explain to her for all those years?

"Come here, Rey. Come where it's comfortable." Leia sits up a little, and holds out her arms.

Rey looks at her, at first seeming confused, like she can't quite remember what this gesture is supposed to signify. With a little beckoning, she comes near, and Leia manages to arrange her right- it's a little awkward at first, if anyone ever bothered to hold Rey so it seems that she has forgotten- but she finds the right place, with her head on Leia's sternum, arms tucked in, her long strong legs trailed away along the bed._ She's not too big to feel the appeal of a mother's cuddles, then- not when she's tired and too muddle-headed to deny it. Not even after all those years alone._

Her hair is different from Ben's, long but thinner. It's still soothing to smooth it back from her face.

Leia looks up at Ben, and is frankly surprised that, for all that she's known or suspected of him, he doesn't look jealous. At least, not jealous of Rey for being held by his mother. He appears to be sitting on some seat of his own at the side of the bed, unstill, looking back and forth between their faces, ostensibly because when he's watching one he's not watching the other, raising a hand then pulling it back to push back his hair, his mouth furiously straining to grip whatever it is he's not saying. At length he settles for-

"Do you think if she goes to sleep we'll be cut off?"

"I don't know why you're asking me. I never studied the ways of the Force."

And that's the end of that conversation. Ah yes- Ben doesn't know how to be teased. He really couldn't cut it as a Solo.

"Ma'am? Are you up Ma'am? I've got soup for you, Ma'am. And I had toast somewhere. I think I dropped it. I was going to give it Rey anyway. Rey's drunk, Ma'am, and I going to tell you but Poe says you know already, Ma'am, so I tried to bring toast, Ma'am, but toast and ladders don't mix Ma'am."

For an uncomfortable moment, Kaydel Ko Connix seemed to have appeared in the room as intangibility as Ben did- but no of course, she'd walked in behind him and… Well, Ben didn't seem to have been bothered by her either.

"Kaydel."

"Is that the Connix kid? Isn't she like, a child?"

"Thank you, Kaydel, please put it on the table. Aren't you twenty-two now, Connix?"

"She ate four of my paint-stix last time I saw her. I turned round and she was covered in Genoisis Red."

"I was twenty three- wait- no that's right- twenty-three last week, General. And I still can't carry toast."

"Just put that down, Kaydel- leave it! It's fine! Thank you, my respected signals officer."

"Good. She can eat someone else's crayons, then."

Fortunately, Connix skips out without showing that she noticed anything odd- though not without first giving Leia and Rey both a once-over with a sharpness that betrayed far more sobriety than met the eye.

"Do you actually get up from that bed anymore? Or is this how you despair of this Resistance nonsense?"

"No… not despairing… well not as such… after I was spaced I was unconscious for two cycles. The medics monitored me. There was no precedent, so, no standard procedure. Then I came round, I was on my feet, unsteady- they gave me a cane to walk- but seemed to have gotten away with it. Then after Crait… well, then something started to happen. My temperature spiked overnight- slept it off, went back on duty, not really well enough. Three days later I had another fever, that one worse and longer. Tried going back on duty- blacked out at the consul, which was embarrassing. Bed rest. Three day cycle of fevers, every time I come back tireder- or should that be more tired- I really can't describe it- I don't mean because you haven't had it so you wouldn't know, I mean I have it and the language doesn't work. I get about twenty steps before I need a long lie down."

"It sounds like… it sounds like bloodburn."

"I know."

"I thought it was young people that got that."

"Yes well… It's unusual in many ways. I seem to have gone straight past the early stages. Already past treating, even if there was anywhere I could go."

"Radiation. You managed to hold off respiring in space, but the radiation straight to the body…" "You know, you don't have to explain all this, but yes. Nobody's recorded to have come back from space after being out there unprotected. Seems this is what happens. All I can say is... I'm not in any pain. And I am alive right now-"

_Supreme Leader Kylo Ren,_ she thinks._ Heir of the Empire. He looked Han in the face, and killed him. I'm not obliged to comfort him._

"You got to spend time with Rey."

"Yes, I've gotten to spend time with Rey."

Who now is warm and relaxed against Leia, her breathing regular and deep. Ben is quite blatantly taking it all in, memorizing her as he might never see her again- even sleeping she's bright with health, fierce and alive.

"I'm glad you have her," Ben says.

"So am I." Ben makes eye contact like he's suddenly remembered that people do that.

"I love her," he says.

She knows that. _And does that help anything, anything that he is?_ But even if it doesn't… would it help to fight over that one good thing?

"So you should." It's all she can say- for when she looks at him again, there's only the light from the doorway.

The cot is far too small to let Rey sleep alongside her, and even leaned back on her cushions she's becoming conscious of the weight of a spare but strapping girl.

She'll just hold her like this a bit longer.


End file.
